BERKELEY — In a growing scandal spreading across campus, UC Berkeley on Monday fired assistant basketball coach Yann Hufnagel after an investigation found he violated the university”s sexual harassment policy.

The coach”s firing — four days before Cal is to begin play in the NCAA tournament — marked the campus” third sexual harassment case to come to light in five months, and the second in the past week.

UC Berkeley officials did not detail the specific allegations it substantiated against Hufnagel; Cal Athletics spokesman Wesley Mallette said they are related to “a series of communications and behaviors” between November 2014 and August 2015, when the investigation began.

ESPN reported the allegations may have come from a reporter, citing an anonymous source.

Hufnagel did not return phone calls seeking comment, but in a tweet Monday he wrote: “Right now, the only focus should be on our basketball team! My time to exonerate myself of a fruitless claim by a reporter will come.”

Hufnagel, who coaches the guards on Cal”s basketball team but is regarded primarily as a top recruiter, told ESPN he was “crushed” and that he planned to hire lawyers to clear his name. “I can”t believe it,” he said. “I”m blindsided. I never imagined this would be the outcome.”

The latest in a string of sexual harassment cases on the UC Berkeley campus comes on the heels of a lawsuit last week that revealed UC Berkeley allowed the dean of its law school, Sujit Choudhry, to keep his job after finding he had harassed his executive assistant. And last fall, the news site BuzzFeed News revealed that renowned astronomer Geoff Marcy had been let off with a warning after a campus investigation found he had sexually harassed students over nearly a decade.

Marcy quickly resigned, and Choudhry stepped down last week — in both cases, soon after their cases became public. On Monday, Chancellor Nicholas Dirks added to an extraordinary week of introspection, telling the campus “we profoundly regret any and all errors of judgment on our part.”

On Friday, after an outcry over the Choudhry case, UC President Janet Napolitano intervened, ordering that the former dean, who is still on the law school faculty, be banned from the campus for the rest of the term and face further disciplinary proceedings.

Napolitano also ordered UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks to remove chemistry professor Graham Fleming — who resigned from his vice chancellor position in protest last spring amid harassment findings — from his administrative duties at the Berkeley Global Campus. Fleming”s spokesman, Sam Singer, called the move “a deeply troubling example of the university punishing an innocent and dedicated leader solely to appear to be politically correct.”

The president also on Friday unveiled a systemwide committee to review all proposed sanctions against senior officials accused of sexual assault or harassment violations.

“It is our collective responsibility to ensure that substantiated claims of sexual harassment and sexual assault are dealt with firmly, fairly and expeditiously and that appropriate sanctions are imposed that recognize the serious nature of these claims,” she wrote in a letter to the campus chancellors.

It”s unclear whether the new urgency played into the timing of Hufnagel”s ouster Monday. In his interview with ESPN, Hufnagel suggested his investigation had plodded along throughout the season: “Cal has been incredibly slow-moving in the process.”

On Monday, Cal Athletics announced that basketball Coach Cuonzo Martin had fired Hufnagel.

“Effective immediately, Hufnagel has been relieved of his duties pending the outcome of the termination process and will not be traveling with the team during its NCAA Men”s Basketball Tournament run,” said a statement from the campus.

Speaking with reporters at a teleconference Monday, Martin said: “You”re talking about a guy who”s part of your staff and a family member. We take a tremendous amount of pride in that. We push forward. There”s always bumps in the road. We talk about these things, life things. It”s not an easy thing, but we”ll find our way.”

Hufnagel came to Cal with Martin two years ago following one season as an assistant at Vanderbilt and four years at Harvard, where he was credited with helping to develop Palo Alto”s Jeremy Lin into an NBA guard.

The Bears face Hawaii on Friday at Spokane, Washington, in their NCAA tournament opener.

Some critical of UC Berkeley”s handling of sexual harassment and assault complaints, including sophomore Marisa McConnell, say the swift termination of Hufnagel could be just a reaction to bad publicity — not a true shift in the campus”s approach to an old problem.

“This is all surfacing now,” she said. “There”s no way we can continue to put it all under the rug.”